Category: Generative AI

Oracle Enterprise Data Management Cloud: Where AI Readiness Actually Starts

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been working in Oracle Cloud for any length of time, you’ll know that data governance quality determines the quality of everything downstream. Reports, forecasts, consolidations, AI outputs: they’re all only as good as the master data behind them. Following the EDM London Spotlight I attended, here’s where the product stands and where it’s heading.

What EDM is (and isn’t)

The naming matters. EDM is “Enterprise Data” Management, not Enterprise “Data Management.” It’s not a database tool or storage layer. It’s a governed system of reference for managing the data that describes your enterprise: hierarchies, dimensions, master data, reference data, data maps, taxonomies, reporting structures.

The problem it solves is one most Oracle customers will recognise. Without EDM, a chart of accounts change request starts with an email to IT, fans out to half a dozen application admins, and ends somewhere between a hierarchy mismatch in Planning and a data kickout in Financial Consolidation and Close (FCC). No audit trail, no systematic workflow, no single point of control. EDM replaces that with a governed, collaborative process where changes are requested, validated, approved, and propagated in a controlled sequence.

EDM versus Oracle DRM

DRM was built for waterfall implementation: gather requirements, build the model, deliver, train, repeat. EDM is designed for an agile, incremental approach. Turn it on, start using it, add rules and policies as they become evident. The traditional MDM big-bang approach has a well-documented failure rate, and EDM’s application-centric model sidesteps it. You start with one application, demonstrate value, and grow from there. New applications are onboarded incrementally without disrupting what’s already in place. For organisations still on DRM, the migration path is practical: users continue in DRM while it’s registered inside EDM as an application, and the legacy system is archived once the transition is complete.

Implementation design patterns

The London session was clear on which pattern works best. Nominate an originating application rather than using a master application as the front door to all changes. The originating application pattern keeps data, objects, and validations scoped to the application that owns them. Downstream applications subscribe to changes. This avoids the problem where a single undifferentiated data model makes it impossible to isolate which rules belong to which application. The master application pattern can work if you reduce it to canonical properties only, but it adds complexity and makes onboarding new applications more disruptive.

EDM and AI

Oracle’s AI approach in EDM operates at two levels.

Internal assistants work within EDM’s existing request and approval model. The Registration Assistant (25.12) generates application metadata and configuration artefacts from a sample data file, accelerating new application setup considerably. The Conversational Request Assistant lets users query master data in natural language, ask questions about existing requests, and generate bulk update actions, all within normal governance controls. Future internal assistants on the roadmap include a Data Profiling Assistant and a Data Matching Assistant using hybrid string, fuzzy, and semantic match rules.

Foundational data governance for AI is arguably the most consequential angle. When enterprise data objects lack clear intent in their descriptions, AI models infer incorrectly. Conflicting hierarchies across ERP, EPM, SCM, and HCM produce inconsistent answers. EDM’s governed descriptions, properties, hierarchies, and cross-application mappings become the ground truth that AI models rely on, reducing hallucination risk and making outputs auditable. If your organisation is investing in enterprise AI, getting master data governance right isn’t optional preparation: it’s what determines whether your AI outputs are trustworthy.

Multi-domain MDM and the roadmap

EDM was built domain-agnostic from day one, which is a genuine competitive differentiator. Competitors largely started in a single domain and expanded. EDM covers Party, Product, Location, Finance, and other domains natively. For Fusion ERP customers, CDM (Customer Data Management) remains the right starting point for mastering customer party records. EDM enriches those with alternate hierarchies, data maps, and cross-application alignment before distributing to EPM and Analytics. For heterogeneous environments with multiple Salesforce instances across regions, EDM can act as the central master customer data hub.

If your Oracle Cloud implementation hasn’t included an EDM conversation yet, it probably should. And if you’re planning an AI initiative on top of Oracle Fusion, EDM is where the trusted data foundation that makes AI outputs reliable actually gets built.

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Unlocking Real‑World Value with Oracle’s AI Factory

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

AI is moving at an incredible pace, and it can feel hard to know where to start, or how to get real results quickly. That’s exactly where Oracle’s AI Factory comes in. It gives organisations a clear, practical way forward, with step‑by‑step guidance, useful tools, and expert support to help you adopt, scale, and make the most of AI across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Database, the Fusion Applications Suite, and industry solutions.

Instead of trying to figure everything out on your own, you can tap into prebuilt use cases, clear guidance, and tried‑and‑tested patterns that cut down on both effort and risk. The framework is all about driving real, measurable improvements, whether that means modernising legacy systems, unlocking real‑time insights, or making the most of the embedded AI already available across Oracle’s application suite.

Many organisations don’t realise just how deeply AI is already built into Oracle’s technology stack. Once they see what’s possible, the same questions usually come up: Where do we begin? What does success look like? How do we make sure we see real value? Oracle’s AI Factory is designed to answer exactly those questions and guide customers through every step of the journey. With support from Oracle’s experts and the AI Customer Excellence Centres, you can validate ideas, shape use cases, and run pilots with confidence, all while keeping innovation moving without taking on unnecessary risk.

The first tool in the new AI Factory toolkit is one I already use, and genuinely love. Oracle’s Cloud Success Navigator is an AI‑powered platform that supports customers through every stage of their Oracle Cloud journey, from best‑practice guidance to migration support, feature updates, and resources that help speed up adoption. It brings everything together in one place: useful tools, expert insights, and clear, structured guidance to help organisations get implementations right, stay up to date with new capabilities, and get more value from their investments. By cutting through the complexity that often comes with cloud decisions, it helps teams move faster, reduce risk, and take full advantage of Oracle’s latest innovations across infrastructure and applications.

Oracle’s AI Customer Excellence Center gives organisations a practical, low‑risk way to explore and validate advanced AI and multicloud architectures by working directly with Oracle experts. It’s essentially a global hub where customers can try out proof‑of‑concepts, refine complex designs, and make sure their AI solutions perform reliably at scale. With this expert support on hand, teams can move faster, de‑risk big ideas, and make well‑informed decisions as they modernise and adopt AI across cloud, hybrid, or multicloud environments. It’s all about giving customers the confidence to innovate, without the unnecessary guesswork.

Oracle’s Operate services help organisations run their Oracle technology more efficiently by giving them hands‑on expertise across infrastructure, databases, and applications, while also opening the door to AI‑powered capabilities that streamline day‑to‑day work and support better decision‑making. The idea is simple: free up your internal teams to focus on innovation and higher‑value work, while Oracle takes care of the smooth running, optimisation, and ongoing evolution of your cloud environment. It’s a practical way to stay agile, reduce operational risk, and get more from your Oracle investment.

Oracle’s Innovate services are all about helping organisations adopt new Oracle capabilities quickly and confidently. They combine expert guidance, proven best practices, and time‑saving automation to speed up transformation and make the whole process feel far more manageable. Because these services are closely connected with Oracle Product Development, and delivered in collaboration with partners, customers get the support they need to embrace AI‑powered features, modern cloud technologies, and continuous improvement across their Oracle estate. The goal is simple: reduce risk, shorten implementation timelines, and ensure organisations can unlock long‑term value and innovation from their Oracle investments, all while keeping pace with fast‑changing business demands.

I love that Oracle has pulled together a complete toolkit across Applications, Data, and Infrastructure to support organisations on their AI journey. I keep a close eye on what others in the market are doing, and time and again it feels like Oracle is ahead, not just in delivering the technology, but in giving customers the tools and guidance they need to get real value from it. I’m genuinely excited to hear more about AI Factory and see what comes next. If you’re interested in exploring how it could help your organisation, now’s the perfect time to start the conversation.

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Why Embedded AI Is the Real Differentiator in Enterprise Automation

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

AI is everywhere at the moment, there’s really no getting away from it, but not all AI is created equal. Plenty of platforms promise co‑pilots, assistants and automation, yet very few can actually take action inside core business systems. That’s why Oracle’s approach with AI Agent Studio for Fusion Applications really stands out.

Most enterprise AI tools today act as co‑pilots: brilliant for drafting content or answering questions, but far less capable when it comes to genuine process automation. Oracle has taken a different approach. Its AI agents are embedded directly within Fusion Applications, giving them the power to:

  • Understand business data in real time
  • Make decisions with full context
  • Write back into transactional systems securely
  • Automate tasks end‑to‑end without relying on extra tools

This isn’t AI “bolted on”, it’s AI woven right into the core of the application. And yes, I realise I’m starting to sound like an Oracle salesperson, but the difference between Oracle and other providers is hard to ignore. The image below highlights just how significant that gap is, comparing what Oracle delivers with five other major service providers.

Across the market, vendors are running into the same familiar obstacles:

  1. Added AI costs. Whether it’s Copilot capacity, ServiceNow’s AI tiers or Salesforce Flex Credits, AI is frequently positioned as an optional extra rather than something included as standard.
  2. Co‑pilots, not agents. Microsoft, Salesforce, Workday and others are excellent at generating content and offering recommendations, but they seldom deliver true autonomous action within transactional systems.
  3. Fragmented platforms. Many providers depend on several data models, clouds and integration layers. Their AI often relies on separate analytics environments or copied data, which strips away workflow context and makes automation far more difficult.

You may have already come across Oracle’s One Platform, and this is where Oracle really pulls ahead of the pack. Oracle keeps things refreshingly straightforward: Fusion Applications, data and AI all sit within a single, unified ecosystem. That brings three key advantages:

  • Embedded intelligence — agents work directly inside the applications employees use every day.
  • A unified security and data model — consistent governance and safer, more reliable automation.
  • True write‑back — agents can update transactions natively, without middleware or separate AI clouds getting in the way.

So you might be wondering, “That all sounds impressive, but what does it actually mean for me?” At its core, agentic AI is about cutting down manual effort, improving accuracy and boosting operational efficiency. Oracle’s embedded approach ensures that automation is reliable, properly governed and able to scale as your business does. Crucially, it isn’t stitched together from multiple products. With Oracle, AI is built in, a fundamental part of the system that runs your business, not an optional extra layered on top. It marks a shift from AI that simply talks, to AI that genuinely delivers.

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METRO – The Jewel in the Crown in Oracle AI Agent Studio

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

Have you heard about METRO? METRO is the embedded measurement and observability framework within Oracle AI Agent Studio. It stands for:

Oracle have introduced METRO as part of release 25D. It is a brand-new set of monitoring and evaluation tools built right into Oracle AI Agent Studio. Think of METRO as your control centre for AI agents in production. It gives you everything you need to keep an eye on accuracy, compliance, performance, costs, latency and even token usage. In short, it helps you make sure your agents are doing exactly what you expect, without any surprises.

The world of AI agents isn’t straightforward, responses can vary, workflows aren’t always predictable, and traditional checks don’t always work. That’s where METRO steps in. It’s designed for this new reality, offering smart ways to check semantic correctness, track detailed performance metrics and keep guardrails in place against risks like prompt injection. Whether you’re running complex multi-agent setups or more structured workflows, METRO makes it easier to stay on top of quality and reliability.

One of the best parts? The dashboard. It gives you a clear view of key stats like latency, error rates, token counts and correctness scores. And if you want to dig deeper, you can trace every single step an agent took, from LLM calls to tools used and outputs generated. This level of detail means you can troubleshoot quickly and optimise performance without the guesswork.

METRO also helps with testing, using the industry-standard LLM-as-a-Judge approach to score responses and provide feedback you can act on. Combine that with new features in 25D, like deterministic workflow agents and support for models such as GPT‑5 mini, and you’ve got flexibility to build agents for any scenario.

METRO isn’t just another feature, it’s a game-changer for anyone looking to manage AI agents with confidence. By combining deep insights, flexible evaluation tools and full traceability, it gives you everything you need to keep your AI ecosystem running smoothly. And with the added power of new models and workflow options in 25D, you’ve got all the tools to innovate faster and smarter. The future of AI governance starts here and METRO makes it simple!

AI Use in HCM Cloud

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

Oracle has just introduced a new set of AI agents within its Fusion Cloud Applications, and they’re set to make a real difference for HR teams. These agents are designed to support HR leaders throughout the entire employee journey—from hiring to retirement—by streamlining processes, improving the employee experience, and freeing up time for more strategic work. Whether you’re in recruitment, management, or part of the wider workforce, these tools are here to make everyday tasks easier and more efficient.

Built into Oracle Fusion Applications and running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the AI agents are secure, fast, and included at no extra cost. They’re designed to work seamlessly within your existing workflows, so there’s no need to learn a new system. From helping employees discover internal job opportunities to assisting recruiters with interview scheduling, these agents are all about making HR more intuitive and responsive.

When it comes to career development, Oracle’s new agents offer some genuinely helpful features. Managers can get support with setting and tracking team goals, while employees receive tailored advice on roles that match their skills and aspirations. There’s even a Learning Tutor agent to help employees get more out of training courses, and a Talent Advisor agent that helps managers plan promotions and career growth using real performance data.

Core HR tasks are also getting a boost. Employees can quickly get answers to questions about pay, leave, or benefits through the Employee Concierge agent, while managers have their own version to help with team-related queries. There’s also a Positions Assistant agent that helps HR leaders make smarter staffing decisions by analysing organisational data and policies.

Finally, the agents support the full employee lifecycle, including onboarding, development, and offboarding. The Succession Planning Advisor helps HR teams stay ahead of leadership gaps, and the Payroll Run Analyst keeps payroll running smoothly by flagging anomalies and explaining any issues. Altogether, these AI agents mark a big step forward in making HR more proactive, personalised, and data-driven.

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Oracle Digital Assistant – Does it have a Future?

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With the introduction of AI Agents in Fusion, many are questioning the future role of Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) within Oracle’s roadmap. During the AI Agent Studio training, it was mentioned that ODA seeded skills will eventually become obsolete, although no further details with regards to a timeline were provided. Since then, Oracle’s 25C What’s New documentation has confirmed that some older seeded skills are beginning to be deprecated—however, this is not a new development, as the phasing out of legacy skills has been an ongoing process.

Oracle Digital Assistant

Several Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) skills are now deprecated and may soon become obsolete, requiring timely updates to maintain compatibility with Fusion Cloud Applications’ quarterly releases. The Expenses skill built on ODA version 20.08, the Candidate Experience skill on version 22.08, and the Internal Candidate Experience skill version 1 on version 23.06 are all deprecated—customers should ensure they have deployed the appropriate V2 versions of these skills to stay aligned with the latest updates.

An additional key point of note is that the HCM Knowledge skill has been decommissioned as of release 25A, and customers using the Classic HR Help Desk are advised to transition to the ‘Search Knowledge Article’ intent within the Helpdesk skill for continued support.

Adding Skills in Oracle Digital Assistant

Oracle advises customers to check the Skill Store for updated versions for every release. If you access a skill built on a deprecated platform version, a warning message will appear, and you can click the ‘Tell me more’ option to view additional details about the platform versions. Skills will cease to function once their underlying platform version becomes inactive, which typically occurs no later than two years after their release.

To ensure your Digital Assistant or skill remains up to date, you can easily install the latest version from the Skill Store whenever an update is available. Simply sign in to Oracle Digital Assistant, navigate to Development > Digital Assistants via the Navigator, and within the tile for the relevant skill or digital assistant, click the menu icon and select Install Update. After upgrading your digital assistant, it’s essential to reassign the appropriate channels to the new version to ensure continued functionality. To do this, sign in to Oracle Digital Assistant and navigate to Development > Channels via the Navigator. Click on Channel, and in the Create Channel dialog box, enter the necessary details, selecting the required channel type from the list. Once created, to link this channel to the latest version of FADigitalAssistant, use the Route To drop-down menu to search for and select the updated version. Finally, click Reset Sessions, and in the Change Channel Routing dialog box, confirm by clicking Change.

Oracle AI Agent Studio

At this stage, there’s no immediate need for customers to move away from Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA); however, it’s a good time to begin reviewing the skills currently in use and identifying the types of questions your users typically ask. These insights can serve as a valuable foundation for developing AI Agents using the new AI Agent Studio, which is being introduced in release 25C. Taking a proactive approach now will give you ample time to plan and transition before ODA eventually becomes obsolete—whenever that may be.

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Ask Oracle – The New Way to Interact with Fusion

~ K8 Mead ~ Leave a comment

Have you heard about Ask Oracle? I was chatting with someone from Oracle recently and left the conversation genuinely excited! It gets a brief mention in the Common Features for 25C, but there’s not much detail available just yet. So, what is it? Ask Oracle will form part of a new navigation experience being introduced in 25D. You’ll be able to use it to search for tasks, applications, and information—and it will also serve as your way of navigating between different areas. The Home page with Ask Oracle will remember where you’ve recently been and the places you visit most often, helping you get to what you need more quickly and intuitively.

Ask Oracle Homepage

Oracle understands that when users open Fusion, it’s usually with a specific task in mind. The new Ask Oracle experience is designed to make that journey more intuitive—whether you prefer to simply ask for what you need or browse a curated list of intelligent suggestions. To support this, the redesigned home experience brings together three key elements: a product map view to help you explore what’s available; intelligent suggestions that surface the most relevant items based on your likely next steps; and a modern search function with rapid type-ahead, synonym recognition, and integrated business objects—making it easy to find what you’re looking for, even if you’re unsure of the exact name or didn’t realise you needed it.

Ask Oracle Navigation

The version being released in 25D is the first iteration. This will continue to evolve over time. Future versions of the Home experience with Ask Oracle will support a full range of user goals: whether you’re exploring what’s possible with “What can I do?”, tackling a specific task with “I want to do ‘x’…”, or checking in with “What needs my attention?” to understand what actions are required to keep things moving. The application will intelligently highlight tasks and priorities to help maintain workflow momentum.

If you’d like to use Ask Oracle, it will need to be enabled following the 25D release. Once enabled, the Home experience with Ask Oracle will replace both the global header and the existing home page used in the News Feed layout. You can set Home with Ask Oracle as the default home page layout via the Appearance work area.

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Key Highlights from Oracle’s HCM Cloud Centre of Excellence Summit

~ K8 Mead ~ 1 Comment

This week was the HCM Cloud Centre of Excellence Customer Summit. This was my first one, but I believe it was Oracle’s fifth summit. Oracle tried to be as inclusive as possible with the timings to accommodate different time zones, but I will be honest the 4-9pm UK time was a bit tricky to juggle, but I was able to go to every session and I’m really glad I did.

Chris Leone, the EVP of HCM and SCM apps development kicked things off. Some of the things announced on Chris’ key note were so new, the session couldn’t be recorded. It’s always a delight to hear Chris speak, he’s so passionate about Cloud Apps and makes you want to join him on his journey. As you would expect, the theme of the whole summit was Redwood and AI as these are the main two key areas of interest from HCM Cloud customers at the moment.

It was nice to get a recap on the functionality that Redwood brings, both embedded within the new pages, but also the ability to extend them using VBS. There was a recap on the Personalisation Helper Tool, both for HCM and SCM. If you don’t know what this is, check out my earlier blog on the tool. If you’ve never used it, I would recommend you check it out!

The piece that excited me the most, was the AI. We’ve all heard of Gen AI, check out my earlier blog on the use of it within Oracle HCM Cloud, if you missed it. Agentic AI takes it to the next level and I’m delighted that Oracle are incorporating it into their applications. Agentic AI is a type of AI that can independently make decisions and solve problems. It takes Machine Learning (ML), Large Language Models (LLM) and Enterprise Automation to create agents that can learn and adapt over time. The slide above refers to RAG based agents, but what are they? RAG stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation and RAG agents are part of RAG applications, which combine external data retrieval with LLMs to generate answers to user queries. In terms of practical application, the AI Agents can complete tasks autonomously, but also know when to loop in an actual user, either for approvals or review.

Oracle already have all of the above AI Agents available now. They can be activated in any process flow that supports Guided Journeys. This is just the start though, Oracle are in the process of developing more AI Agents, with plans for Agentic Agents too, for solutions such as sourcing candidates and scheduling interviews in Recruit and Succession Planning within Talent.

It’s a very exciting time in the Oracle HCM Cloud world and I can’t wait to see all the upcoming AI developments. I’ve got so many things to share from the Summit, so keep an eye out for more blogs. I’ll also write more updates on AI as Oracle announce them.

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Generative AI in Oracle HCM Cloud

~ K8 Mead ~ 2 Comments

Everyone is talking about AI these days and Oracle is no different! The use of AI within Oracle applications isn’t new – Digital Assistant, Oracle’s chatbot has been in action for a while. Digital Assistant uses ‘skills’ similar to Alexa which are used as a basis for enquiries. Oracle provides seeded skills but custom ones can also be created.

But what about Generative AI or Gen AI? Gen AI uses machine learning to learn patterns from the data and then create content based on it. Oracle have been incorporating Gen AI into HCM Cloud since release 24A. All of the features released require Redwood as they can be activated via VB Studio. Oracle have introduced AI Assist in a lot of applications, although predominantly in the Talent and Performance modules. AI Assist will take the information provided and summarise it. For instance, when a Line Manager reviews all Performance Documents, the AI Assist button will compile and summarise all pertinent performance information for that Employee. This feature saves the manager time by providing an editable summary, designed to enhance efficiency without eliminating the human touch.

Gen AI is also available in Recruit to help produce content for your Career Site. By populating the topic, how many words you require it to be and a few key terms / words, the AI Assistant will generate the text for you. As with all Gen AI within Oracle, you can tweak the content as much as required, but it will make the process much easier.

The new AI features continued in 24D, which included the introduction of AI Assistance for Market Composites in Compensation Info. This allows organisations to utilise Gen AI to generate explanations for market composites to Line Managers within the Compensation module. This will help guide the conversations between Line Managers and Employees about the competitiveness of their compensation package.

Oracle are constantly working on new use cases for Gen AI. It is anticipated that in 25A, the Benefits Analyst Agent will be available. This will allow Employees and Line Managers to ask the chatbot about available benefits for them, but also question why things have changed etc. It can also link to the sources that it used to determine the response, so the Employee can validate the information, if required.

Oracle is investing heavily in Gen AI and other ways to optimise user’s experience, so there will be more announcements soon. I expect a number of features to be included in 25A, not just the Benefits Analyst Agent. Once they are announced, I will do another post.

About the author:

Kate Mead is an Oracle-certified HCM Consultant and Solution Architect at Version 1 with 14 years of experience in Oracle HR and Payroll systems, including 7 years with Oracle HCM Cloud. She has worked across implementation projects and managed services, has a sound knowledge of UK Payroll legislation and — before becoming a consultant — was an HR Manager.

If you have any questions or would like more information on how Version 1 can help you realise the full potential of your Oracle Cloud instances, please contact her at kate.mead@version1.com

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